Dr. Maya Shankar: How to Shape Your Identity & Goals

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2023

⏱️ 154 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, my guest is Maya Shankar, Ph.D., a cognitive scientist, former senior advisor to the White House and Chair of the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. She is the creator and host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans. We discuss how our identities develop and change, how our beliefs and internal narratives shape our perception of self, and how to use structured introspection about our values to determine our goals. We discuss how to cope and grow through uncertain situations, especially those that force us to reexamine our roles and identity. Dr. Shankar shares her experience of redefining her identity after an early career-ending setback. She also explains numerous science-based strategies to effectively define goals, structure our goal pursuits and maintain consistent motivation. This episode provides a science-supported toolkit and roadmap to assess your identity and goals and positively transform in the face of change. For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman Maui Nui Venison: https://mauinuivenison.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/huberman Supplements from Momentous https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Dr. Maya Shankar (00:02:37) Sponsors: Maui Nui Venison & Eight Sleep (00:05:15) Identity Foreclosure, Identity Paralysis, Throughlines (00:12:10) Identity & Adolescence; “Essence” & Shame (00:16:58) Delight & Awe (00:23:00) Delight & Possibilities for Self (00:29:28) Playing Violin, Childhood (00:34:54) Sponsor: AG1 (00:35:58) Intrinsic Motivation; Juilliard & Courage (00:45:43) Competitive Environments; Curiosity & Growth (00:53:46) Re-Creating of Self (01:00:51) Pop-Science, Science Accessibility (01:05:25) Sponsor: InsideTracker (01:06:32) Passions & Curiosity (01:13:20) Change, Cognitive Closure, End-of-History Illusion (01:22:29) Self-Awareness & Critical Feedback (01:30:48) Tools: Flexible Mindset; Reframing & Venting; Gratitude (01:40:13) Tool: Framing Goals (01:47:13) Tool: Agency in Goal Pursuit (01:52:25) Tool: Like-Minded People & Goal Pursuit; Challenging Beliefs (02:01:27) Cultivating Open-Mindedness & Empathy (02:08:15) Building Self Narratives: Empathy, Burnout (02:13:56) Tools: Goal Setting (02:19:54) Tool: “Middle Problem”, Maintaining Motivation (02:24:55) Tool: Aversion & Memory, Peak-End Rule (02:31:41) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube Feedback, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, Momentous, Neural Network Newsletter, Social Media Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Uberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
0:09.0	I'm Andrew Uberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and
0:12.4	Optimalogy at Stanford School of Medicine.
0:15.3	Today my guest is Dr. Maya Shankar.
0:17.9	Dr. Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist who did her undergraduate training at Yale University.
0:22.7	Her PhD thesis at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and a postdoctoral fellowship also in cognitive science at Stanford University.
0:30.6	Dr. Shankar also served as a senior advisor to the White House and she founded and served as the chair of the White House
0:37.2	Behavioral Science team. Dr. Shankar is also the host of her own podcast entitled A Slight Change of Plans and indeed
0:43.8	Dr. Shankar herself is no stranger to having to make major changes to one's life plans. As you'll learn today,
0:50.4	prior to all of those incredible accomplishments that Dr. Shankar has achieved,
0:55.2	she was a student at the Juilliard Conservatory of Music preparing her life to become a professional concert violinist.
1:02.6	But as you'll also soon learn, she then experienced a career devastating injury,
1:07.5	forcing herself to have to reframe everything about her life plans and her own identity.
1:13.8	And that's really what we talk about today. We talk about identity, not just Dr. Shankar's prior and current identities,
1:20.3	but of course your identity. We pose a number of questions geared toward getting you to ask,
1:25.4	who am I really? Do my goals align with who I am and what I want? Dr. Shankar shares with us the research
1:32.7	on identity goals, motivation and plans, as well as many practical tools to answer those key questions
1:39.7	that guide us down either the correct or incorrect trajectories in life. She shares with us, for instance,
1:45.2	how to assess on-paper goals of the sort that you would see on a CV. So which school, which job,
1:51.3	which salary, which spouse, etc., etc. And how to relate those to the deeper feelings that relate to
1:58.1	one's ability to continually pursue a given goal, knowing that it's the right goal for us.
2:05.1	We also talk about the science of feelings, what they can and cannot tell us,
	...

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